Paul Short and the Journey to Inspire Rock Indoor Climbing & Team Building Center

Thanks to everyone for the overwhelming positive response to this project! It’s nice to know that people are just as interested as I am in the history of Houston climbing and I really appreciate the support. I apologize for the delay on this first history post. Life has been a bit hectic since July but I have the next few posts lined up in drafts so hopefully the posts will be more consistent. As a reminder, I’m starting off this project with what is current and then working from the very beginning of the history of Houston climbing up to what is in the future. This first history post is the story of Paul Short the founder, owner and father of Inspire Rock Indoor Climbing & Team Building Center. I say father because Inspire is his baby and the journey he travelled to have his baby is quite inspiring to say the least.

As I finished putting together all of my notes from my interview with Paul I was fortunate enough to make a trip out to Tennessee for some climbing, white water rafting and hiking. I feel the trip came at an appropriate time because it put me in the right writing space for Paul’s story. There is something about the South, the welcoming smiles, the respectful manners, the culture, the food, the connection to family and the accents that makes my heart warm (not to mention the super sticky sandstone!). I spent the first five years of my life growing up in Arkansas. The majority of my parents’ families still live there and although I haven’t been very good about visiting family like I should, I do get out there to climb at least once a year. I even got to work on an Arkansas farm one summer. It always takes me back to some special times in my life and visiting Tennessee took me to that mental space too. Talking to Paul and hearing his story, through his Southern drawl pastor’s son’s voice, also took me back. Appropriately so because I think his Southern roots of family, manners and respect show in his gym and staff. So grab yourself a cold glass of sweet tea, sit on your porch if you have one and saunter down memory lane of Paul Short and his journey to open Inspire Rock Indoor Climbing & Team Building Center.

Paul Short was born in Dallas Ft. Worth, TX. He grew up in Duncanville, TX outside of Dallas until he was 10 years old and then his family moved to Bainbridge, Georgia a town of around 30,000 people. He graduated from the only high school in the close-knit town. Paul played football, basketball, tennis and the standard American high school sports but had never heard of rock climbing. After high school Paul studied Psychology at Samford University in Birmingham, AL. Paul’s dad was a Southern Baptist pastor and in 1990 invited Paul to a wedding that he was presiding over. Paul’s dad knew that Truett Cathy, the founder of Chik-Fil-A, was going to be in attendance and told Paul that he should go so he could maybe meet the Southern business celebrity. Paul, unsure of whether he wanted to attend the wedding, was finally convinced to go. At the wedding Truett and Paul met and Truett told the young college student about his camp that he owned in north Georgia in a town called Rome. He invited Paul to come see the camp and work as a camp counselor for the summer. Paul drove in to WinShape camp at Berry College and for the first time in his life saw “these things hanging out of trees,” which turned out to be part of a ropes course. The camp counselors showed Paul a promotional video that had kids climbing at a place called Sandrock in Alabama. Paul took a job as a counselor with the older boys camp. Part of the two week session was taking the kids rock climbing as well as facilitating ropes courses and Paul fell in love. “It was the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my life. We had old style harnesses, two belay loops that come together that you tie into, a pair of sneakers and that was it.” WinShape contacted Paul at the end of the summer and asked if he would be willing to come back the following year to be on their central staff. They offered to train Paul on how to set up top rope anchor systems and how to run the ropes course.

Paul graduated in 1991 and was hired as the Adventure Coordinator overseeing the WinShape summer rock climbing programs, ropes course programs and canoe programs. While Paul was getting trained he had the idea to combine rock climbing and ropes courses working with companies. At the time some companies were using ropes courses to improve their company team work and strengthen employee work relations but not very many. Paul started sharing with his best friend Luke, also a recent college graduate, how he imagined taking companies through team building and rock climbing programs to build them up as a cohesive unit. Paul and Luke went to Dan Cathy, then the Vice President of Chik-Fil-A and now the current CEO of Chik-Fil-A. Paul and Luke, found ties, semi-clean dress shirts, brief cases, hand-written notes and went to the Chik-Fil-A headquarters in Atlanta, GA and met with Dan Cathy. Paul told Dan that his camp at Berry College was underutilized and was sitting idle nine months out of the year. Paul wanted the Cathys to let him and Luke use their facility to bring companies through to work with them on rock climbing, ropes courses and maybe some paddling experiences on the Nantahala with the focus of team development. Dan liked the idea and thought it sounded great up until Paul said, “and you’ll pay me $30,000 a year, you’ll pay Luke $30,000 a year and you’ll pay our friend Tammy $30,000 a year.” Dan countered with the idea of having Paul and his team testing the waters to see if there was a market for it. Paul and his team agreed and formed the program Winshape Wilderness and it is still operating to this day. Slowly but surely companies and organizations started calling and the Cathys provided Paul and his team a place to live on the mountain campus of Berry College. It was Paul’s first attempt at having a business.

As it got into the cooler months, business slowed and Paul got a call from San Antonio, TX from a TV advertising agency. A friend of Paul’s father offered him a job working for Kaleidoscope TV, a cable channel for people with disabilities. Paul took the job and began working with people in the disabled community. One lady, Donna, was a former Miss Wheelchair America. Another lady, Kim Powers, was blind deaf and speech impaired, a modern day Helen Keller. She had a TV show called Kim’s World, documenting her adventures traveling to different places and doing activities like scuba diving.

Paul has always been entrepreneurial but he doesn’t think he was always aware of it. He had the typical odd jobs during Junior High and High School, mowing people’s grass, running lemonade and snow cone stands. Bu he was never conscious that he wanted to be an entrepreneur. Paul had very little skin in the game with Winshape Wilderness. “In a sense it was easy to pretend I was an entrepreneur but it was real easy to try to spend a billionaire’s money.” Paul thinks it is interesting that people think just because a person has billions of them that it must be nothing to them. People assume Paul is rolling in the money but he gets “excited as Christmas when I find a quarter on the ground.” After working in San Antonio for a year Paul realized that it wasn’t what he was supposed to do.

Paul moved to Fort Worth to enroll in seminary at Southwestern Seminary. His plan was to get his degree as a Christian counselor, and work as a licensed professional counselor, specializing in adventure based counseling using ropes courses, team building, rock climbing, paddling, etc. While at seminary Paul worked at TCU as a hall director. The building was called Milton Daniel, the largest men’s dormitory at TCU. 95% of the “knuckleheads” were freshmen. They told Paul they hadn’t had anyone work there two years in a row in a very long time. For two plus years Paul dealt with “fires, fire alarms, dumps in the hallway, and no sleep to say the least”. He only went to seminary for one semester. He realized the number of hours required was going to be equivalent to a doctorate program. Paul was ready to, “get to it,” rather than studying how to do it. TCU built a ropes course and had Paul trained by Adventure Experiences Inc. (AEI) out of Trinity, Texas. While Paul was getting the training AEI asked Paul to work for their summer facility in Taylor Park area of Colorado outside of Gunnison and Crested Butte. The facility was at 10,000 ft. elevation off the Continental Divide. There was no internet, email, or newspaper, and very limited phone access. Paul was content in his new environment and from 1993 to 1994 he guided backpacking, climbing, white water rafting, fly fishing, ropes courses, and orienteering.

In the summer of 1993 Paul got a phone call that his dad was sick with cancer and had six months to live. Paul’s father passed away in the spring of 1994. Through the death of his father, Paul was re-introduced to his dad’s best friend’s niece Terri. Paul originally met Terri when he was 12 and she was 10. When his father passed, Terri and her parents came to visit. Paul’s mom sent him a letter with Terri’s picture and asked “Didn’t she turn out lovely?” Paul thought that she turned out, “absolutely beautiful.” Paul wrote Terri and told her he was moving to Colorado and that it was always nice having someone to write to and asked her to write letters. They fell in love through letter writing that summer. Paul would take a group out on a backpacking trip, they would set up camp and cook dinner, after dinner Paul would write a letter or read one of hers. He considers getting to know Terri through letters to be “very special times.” Terri came to see Paul in Colorado and he told her, “I now know how to sign our letters, I’ll now be writing I love you.”

They married in November 1994. When they got married he was working for Adventure Experiences full time. He would spend six months in Texas and six months in Colorado. Terri was a nurse and got a job in Colorado and in Texas. Paul was Assistant Director of Training in their basecamp. He was on the road 3.5 weeks out of a month training people around the country on how to run ropes courses, how to tie the knots, how to belay, how to set up the activities, how to rescue a person, and how to do ziplines. Rock climbing, adventure activities have since been a part of Paul and Terri. Paul has a cherished picture of him and Terri climbing Dome Driver at Enchanted Rock. At his peak Paul was seconding 5.11c out at Gunnison and enjoyed leading up to 5.9 on trad. Paul was never the strongest climber; rather, he was drawn to the effect of climbing on the participants. He would have loved to have been a super strong climber but he enjoyed and still enjoys being a part of peoples’ climbing experiences and facilitating them.

During his time working for AEI Paul met the assistant superintendent of Huntsville ISD while training the teachers for their newly built ropes course. Paul was offered and accepted a position in 1995 at Huntsville ISD to teach school and oversee the ropes course. He got his teaching certificate and taught Junior High and High School at an at-risk, alternative school, working with the kids kicked out of regular school for bad behavior. He ran special programs in the summer for teachers and students on the school’s 60 acre property. Paul developed a two week program called the Huntsville Leadership Academy. Teachers and students were broken into teams and Paul facilitated team building activities on the ropes course and climbing tower. Paul also taught the groups how to build basic shelters and how to work in teams for designing and cooking meals. They would discuss community and how they could improve the community. The camp was allotted a budget for a community project. Paul also implemented a public speaking component and a personality inventory component. At the end of two weeks participants would have a solo adventure and journal about their experience. Paul worked at the school for two years.

In 1997 Paul decided to start his own ropes course company, Team Synergy. In the beginning he took Boyscouts out to Enchanted Rock for climbing trips but quickly realized that the standard guide routes were being overrun by competitive companies and his time was better spent focusing on ropes courses and training people how to run ropes courses. Paul received a call from a camp that needed help building a ropes course. Paul knew nothing about construction but one of his neighbors knew everything about construction and over time taught Paul how to build and construct structures.

1998 Terri was pregnant with Drew. Paul was building ropes courses and, “every time that phone needed to ring where I needed money, it always rang.” Paul’s prayers were answered, “it was Divine Providence. Nothing was by chance or coincidence or lucky. It was all divinely appointed. There’s nothing in me that loves going to a wedding but for me to go just to meet Truett Cathy, I could have easily said ‘so, that’s great, I like his chicken sandwiches but I don’t think I care to meet him.’ How our business grew. A guy who knows nothing about ropes courses is now building towers that are 50 ft. tall and ziplines that are a quarter of a mile long. We were just kind of redneck engineers just trying to build.” Paul was building courses in Texas, New Mexico, California, Arkansas, and Indiana. Locally, Paul built a climbing wall at the Fort Bend YMCA. Paul also built climbing walls in schools in Pennsylvania. The company was started in the spare bedroom of Paul’s house. The business grew and Paul sold his house.

In 1999 a man called Paul from Houston about a property at Mangum and 290. He wanted Paul to build a rock gym and run it for him. The man wanted Paul to lease the 30 foot tall facility, build the gym and run it. Paul, not wanting to lease the facility, set out on a quest to figure out how to run a rock gym. He started calling gym owners around the country. Paul talked to a woman who owned a gym and told Paul they got started with a portable rock wall. She told him a wall was around $35,000. Paul went to his grandmother for a loan. She normally avoided mixing business with family but asked Paul to put together a proposal with an interest rate and payment policy. With the support of his grandmother Paul bought a portable wall from Eldorado Climbing Walls in January 2000. Paul drove up to Colorado to find a blank rock wall. Paul was expecting a wall with holds so Eldorado had their head setter set routes on the wall for Paul. 4 miles to the gallon, filling up every 150 miles, Paul drove back to Texas. Thus began the path to Inspire.

With the portability of the wall, Paul wanted to start a program to help kids. Paul, with help from his mom Rebecca Short, started the Rock Solid Character Program. They developed a curriculum using the portable rock wall to go into schools and talk about getting a grip on good character. “Your character is your actions, it’s what you do when no one is watching you.” They related the climbing handholds to their Seven Handholds for Success which are Respect, Responsibility, Honesty, Trustworthiness, Caring and Cooperation, Courage and Perseverance. Paul has currently taught around 400,000 kids, parents and teachers the character lesson. The kids hear the lesson, they get to climb the rock wall and they talk about, “if you make good choices when climbing which way do you go? Up. If you make poor choices when climbing which way do you go? Down. And that principle is the same way in life. If I make good choices I’m going to be successful. If I fail to do so I’m not going to be successful.” Over time it has become more and more difficult to run the program at schools with more hoops to jump through but they are still operating.

In 2004 Paul started talking to Rockwerx. They had a consulting package which Paul purchased. Paul figured out what a healthy rock gym looked like, a good balance between members to day users and other specifics. He started to get an idea for how he wanted his gym to operate. Paul also talked to gym owners about what worked and what didn’t.

In 2005 Paul found a piece of property in Spring, TX. He began to look for investors but everyone that had money said no, that the venture was too risky with no return. Everyone that Paul asked that did not have money said yes. They believed in his dream and got involved. They scraped together a decent amount of money and he met with multiple banks pitching the idea. According to Paul, “the bankers were thinking what are they going to do with a large building when l can’t afford to keep it because no one comes? What are they going to do with the building that’s got tall walls and is built out to be for climbing? They saw it as a single use facility.” Paul needed to figure out how to convert the gym into something else if it didn’t make it. He also had to find more investment money. He spoke with Lehman Brothers that had a financial program that would put in 50%, he had to come up with 10% capital and a SBA loan of 40%. Paul had to find a bank willing to take a risk in building the facility and then Lehman Brothers and the SBA would take them out of that lien position. Even with signed letters and Lehman Brothers and SBA support, all of the banks said no. One banker said, “I don’t get it why would I come to your place, I get it to come once but I climb all your walls why would I want to come back?” Paul replied, “First of all, I don’t think you’re going to be able to climb all the walls. Second of all, you come back because it’s always changing. There are people called routesetters that change the routes around and keep it fresh and new.” The banker still didn’t get it.

2008 the economy crashed. Paul had 2.1 acres of land that he was carrying the note on, paying interest and taxes, but could not build on it. So he put it up for sale. It sat there for a long while. He changed the sign that said “Coming Soon, Inspire Rock” to “For Sale” and waited. Paul compared it to going swimming with a pair of cement shorts, “It was drowning me.” He finally got an offer on the land from the hotel people next door. They agreed on a price and started doing their due diligence only to find there was a tax discrepancy. The tax office said the property was 1.7 acres when it was actually 2.1 acres. Paul had only been paying taxes on 1.7 acres so when he brought it to their attention in February they said he just had to pay the back taxes. It took from February to September for the tax office to fix the discrepancy during which time the hotel people changed their minds. All of this took place during 2009 and 2010.

Going into 2011 and 2012 Paul was “at the end of [his] rope.” His dream of being able to build Inspire was fading and he grieved it like the death of a friend. He couldn’t figure it out. He was so passionate about building it. He got so close so many times only to have the rug jerked from under him. During the course of that time bankers were switching banks. He was going to bankers he had already talked to. One bank said if he could get his price down to “this magic number” they would give him the loan. He cut everything out and took it down to the number only for them to tell him no.

2012 Paul talked to Terri and said, “honey I think we’re about to go bankrupt.” They couldn’t keep carrying the land. He was building ropes courses to barely make enough money to pay the bills. Paul was raised to be a man of character, “so if I make an agreement with you I want to uphold my end of the deal.” In a sense he made an agreement with the bank to pay for the land and he got to a point to where he couldn’t afford to keep paying. Paul went out on the porch with tears in his eyes, looked up at the stars and prayed. He prayed, “God if you want me to go bankrupt, I guess I get to go bankrupt. If you’re big enough to handle that then I guess I need to be big enough to handle that too.” After that moment of surrender things started changing and falling into place. Paul was put in touch with a private investor who stepped in and it went from “What can we cut?” to “What can we add?” Paul called his brother-in-law Charlie, who was working for a defense contractor company. Charlie loved to cook. Paul offered Charlie a café restaurant in the front of his gym to which he accepted. Paul also decided to put in a retail store. He knew one of the frustrations of climbers was kids. He also knew one of the frustrations of kids and parents are climbers. So he decided to add a child care center. He also hired professional climber Josh Haynes to be the head routesetter.

Inspire opened to the public December 2013. “Everyday I come into this place it’s a gift. Seeing people enjoy it.” Paul does everything as an owner from fixing the a/c, stripping routes, cleaning holds, running the front desk, and filling in for floor shifts and summer camp shifts. He loves that fact that every week he’s doing something different.

All the struggles that Paul and his team went through to build Inspire prepared them for what they deal with now that the gym is open. Everything pales in comparison. Paul’s challenge as an owner is staffing and trying to explain to potential staff what the difference between what they think it is and what it actually is to work at a rock gym. Paul explains to potential staff, “If you’re a climber working here is going to be a painful slow death for you. Climbers love to climb but we don’t get paid to climb. We get paid to help others climb. And so if you take great joy in helping other people discover the sport that you love, man, you’re going to love working here. If you don’t, then you’re going to hate working here.”

Paul loves being around people who love what they’re doing. With that said, Keith Vander Wall has worked for Paul for 8 years, Nicole Menasco has worked for Paul for 6 years and Katie Hobson has worked for Paul for 2 years. Their goal is to help others.

Paul tells his new hires, “Welcome to Inspire. This is my baby. I love my baby but I can’t raise my baby by myself. I need your help. So in a sense you can look at yourself as a nanny or a babysitter or what have you but I need help in raising our baby. If I come in and you’re shaking my baby I’m not going to be real happy. You’re going to see me go from all smiles to anger in .2 seconds. Again I love my baby and we got to take care of this place. We got to take care of the people that come in here because if we don’t take care of the people who come in here, guess what? Our baby doesn’t get fed.” Paul uses that analogy to try to ensure that a customer is served to the level he expects them to be served. His goal is at Inspire is not to be good but to be great. Paul applies the same values and strives for the same goals with his marriage and his kids. “Being insecure about yourself is a blessing,” says Paul because it makes one think, “what can I do better? When you’re so confident and sure of yourself many times you don’t think you need to do anything more.”

Paul considers everything in his journey with Inspire to be a success. He considers his greatest success to be, “that other people love this place as much as I do.”

Paul loves his youth competitive climbing team, Team Orange Crush. He is amazed that kids, even in the Youth D category are climbing 5.12d. Several of the kids from Team Orange Crush have made it to nationals. Paul grew up in an era of climbing when climbers who could send 5.11s were considered top level. Paul’s sons, Drew and Luke are on the climbing team. They didn’t care much for climbing in their younger years and Paul may have pushed them a little too hard early on. But when Cedric Colby, Inspire’s original General Manager and Head Coach, asked to work for Paul he decided to take Drew and Luke under his wing. They started climbing with Cedric at Stone Moves while Inspire was under construction. The kids progressed from struggling on V0 and V1 to climbing up to V8/V9 Paul is excited about the youth climbing scene. He is amazed at the rate at which kids progress through the grades. He is also excited about parents supporting their kids in competitions, climbing themselves and spending time at the gym as a family.

“Climbing is an activity that rubs off on your personality.” Paul finds being around climbers to be inspiring. “We’re all kind of working on different levels of life. We’re all ‘going for it.’” Paul enjoys how climbers and the community connect through their love of the sport. There’s a sense of helping and encouragement that he is attracted to and how climbers share a common goal of seeing each other improve. He also loves the passion and commitment that climbers have. “Climbers are some of the most opinionated people you’ll ever meet and I love that.” He likes the fact that climbers will tell him if he messed up or if the routesetters are off on their setting. He loves the loyalty that climbers have to the bigger picture. He likes seeing climbers from other gyms climb at his gym and climbers from his gym climbing at other gyms. He also likes seeing the excitement of new gym climbers going outside for the first time and then progress more into the sport.

I personally feel that by Inspire coming into the Houston scene, barriers were broken. It had always been my experience that there was an unspoken, although many times spoken, rivalry between the Stone Moves and Texas Rock Gym communities. By having a third entity in the picture that has dissipated and there’s more of a Houston climbing community at large.

With the community growing and the sport of climbing growing as much as it is, Paul wants to continue to do his part as a teaching gym. Paul wants to tighten up on the check and double check for climbers especially since there are so many new climbers in the gyms who look up to more experienced climbers and learn from their habits and actions. Paul feels that there are a lot of experienced climbers in our community that exhibit bad habits and short cuts, which may be “safe” to them and well within their skill set, but not a good example for new and learning climbers. One of his biggest pet peeves is climbers not tying in with the figure 8 follow through. It’s easy to check from a distance and by having one standard it’s easy for staff and other climbers to check. He understands that experienced climbers can tie in with other knots, i.e. the bowline, but new climbers see this different knot and get confused or try to mimic it which creates problems for not only the staff but for other climbers as well. Paul would like for the experienced climbers to think about the people who are new and be conscious of that. He would like for the community at large to think more about all of the new climbers coming into the scene, “because they’re coming and we can help them.”

“There’s always the fear of where the gym industry is going to go to from a liability standpoint. As we’re bringing new people in you hear of accidents that occur in gyms and lawsuits that come out of that. It’s always part of the mix in your decision making.” One of the first questions Paul asks groups when they come to the gym for the first time is, “Is it possible to get hurt here?” Parents and kids will say no but Paul responds, “Yes there’s so many places to get hurt in this gym, just walking around you can get hurt, if a person comes down off the wall and you’re too close, and fall zones, landing zones and people getting scared on auto belays and they whip around down the wall.” In regards to the amount of new people climbing indoors he says, “it’s like shark attacks. More people in the water, the more opportunities for sharks.” Paul is very safety conscious and aims to keep a strict safety policy at his gym. Paul was trained as a teacher to start off strict and ease up as you go.

At the end of our interview I asked Paul who he feels has been influential on his becoming part of the history of Houston climbing. Paul feels that John Muse from Stone Moves has been a great impact on Inspire. John helped Paul host the Divisional competition in June 2013 not too long after Inspire opened. John also set for the competition. When Cedric left Inspire recently the Inspire climbing team was coachless and had 13 kids going to Divisionals and John offered to help. Paul feels very humble and grateful for everything John has done. Paul feels that Morgan Young was pivotal in helping grow Inspire. A former professional climber Cody Roth visits Inspire every now and then. Paul appreciates how humble Cody is and how excited the gym gets when he comes in and cruises all of the hard climbs. Paul is grateful for the staff that he works with. They see his vision and every day they work hard. Duke Goulden, Inspire’s head setter, always comes in gets to work and is open to criticism. Most importantly Paul is thankful for Terri his wife for letting him pursue his dream. “This was scary. If we don’t make it, if no one shows up and comes in, this is our world and it’s going to change in a big way. She stood beside me and sits behind me. She’s the financial officer and is the one that makes it all gel at the end of the day. And makes sure people get their paychecks and so I’m really grateful for her. She’s one of those unsung heroes of the climbing community that allows us to have this place and she works hard. I’m grateful to her and my family. Thankful for mom and my kids who help work around the gym as well. It’s very much a family affair here.”

To wrap this up, I remember checking the climbing forums back in 2007 and being excited about the following post, “Hey rasperas, We are in the process of building a new rock gym in north Houston/Spring off I-45 and E. Louetta Rd. by Splash Town Water park. If you don't mind, I'd like to stay in touch and earn your business. The name of the gym is Inspire Rock and will be the largest indoor gym in Texas with nearly 16,000 sq. ft. Feel free to email me [edit] thank you for your time.” Fast forward 5 years and there was chatter on Facebook about a new gym opening in Spring, TX. December 2013, Inspire was open.

Inspire Rock Indoor Climbing & Team Building Center is located at 403 E Louetta Rd, Spring, TX 77373. It is currently the largest indoor rock climbing facility in the Houston area with nearly 17,000 sq. ft. of climbing space. They have an excellent café, a well-stocked pro shop, a day care center and kids specific climbing area. They have a yoga studio, a traditional fitness room and a climbing strength room called the Basement. They also have a full ropes challenge course and the only IFSC speed climbing wall in the Houston area. Their mission is to, “inspire you to climb higher and live inspired.” I’m respectful of and thankful that Paul was able to realize his dream, many people dream but not many see them come to fruition. I truly believe that Inspire has strengthened the Houston climbing community at large and helped climbers and local gyms improve on their weaknesses. So thanks Paul and family and best wishes for your future!